Thursday, November 12, 2015

The North by North Westminster Diary: Storm Abigail "A Desperate Attempt to Make British Weather Sound Badass"

Thursday 12th November

It must have happened at some
kind of meteorological conference.

A bunch of weather forecasters
from the Met Office were sat on a table next to some flash Americans who were
talking about their experiences covering Hurricane This and Hurricane That, and
then mocking their British and Irish counterparts for having to talk about
light drizzle the whole time.

So, they hit the whiskey and come
up with an idea.

“Let’s give our storms names! You
know, like they do. That’ll make our weather sound much more badass.”

And that is why, this morning, we’re
hearing a lot about Storm Abigail. Which is just a regular storm, with some
amber weather warnings. Except now, it all sounds very serious, and Carol
Kirkwood is telling me how we’re all going to be “affected” by Storm Abigail,
and the inevitable happened on The Today
Programme when a climate change campaigner called it “Hurricane Abigail”.

The thing is, it won’t change
anything for the meteorologists at the convention, because they’ll be talking
about Storm Barry or Storm Cheryl, and then the Yankees will say “Well, this
year’s hurricane caused $10bn worth of damage. How much did Storm Derek cause?”

“Errr… well the post office was shut and there
were no fresh catches at the fishmongers in time for the weekend.”

NOMINATE YOUR STORY OF 2015 AHEAD OF OUR END-OF-YEAR POLL. DETAILS IN THIS VIDEO.

More North by North Westminster content is available, including the new podcast here.